"I Am with the West"

Communists mortally hate and fear Chile's Law for the Defense of Democracy and its military pact with the U.S. The law-bars Communists from registering to vote; the pact deters exporting Chilean copper to the U.S.S.R. and its military satellites. Left-wingers have urged President Carlos Ibanez to oppose the law and pact, but he has refused. Last week, in a blunt speech, he told why.

"I fought against the military pact with the U.S. when I was a Senator; I did not agree with its wording," he said. But now "the pact is a pledge which binds us to the U.S. To ask its denunciation is only a Communist slogan . . . What do the workers know about the military pact? What they say is only a line imported from behind the Iron Curtain, where there are ten million slave workers . . .

"During my election campaign I naively spoke of repealing the Law for the Defense of Democracy ... I now realize that the Communists are unworthy to obtain the repeal of a law which keeps them where they cannot harm the country."

Ibanez' conclusion: "I am with the West and will fight for the West."

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